


The Bottle of Vodka You Sleep With

by Shadowmightwrite17



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Late Night Conversations, Late night drinking with a friend, Sad fluff too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 23:22:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14412699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowmightwrite17/pseuds/Shadowmightwrite17
Summary: It's late at night when she knocks on his door with a bottle of vodka and no glasses. Of course, he lets her in."Garcia, I want to get to know you."They talk about their past, about the people they've lost, and the lives they wish they could return to. Then she asks him what he's afraid of.(Warning: brief mention of a suicide of a non-main character, his mom)





	The Bottle of Vodka You Sleep With

**Author's Note:**

> Again, warning: Brief, four-sentence, mention of the suicide of a non-main character. Otherwise, no warnings needed. 
> 
> You can also read this as a follow up to my previous Garcy story "Promise Me Under the Fire of the Hindenburg, Promise Me in the Shadows of the Bunker"

The sounds of the crossroad guitarist still clung to his ears, the notes dancing across his brain in a recorded symphony. Garcia Flynn smiled to himself, the memories of today gently settling into his brain, finding their home in his mind.

Lucy, among the faded wallpaper of the hotel and framed in the sun that drifted through the windows, stared back at him. Everything about her expression was sharp and warning of the dangerous waters he was wading into as he brought up the vodka bottle. Garcia smirked, knowing he’d gone too far then, but knowing that nothing was ever done from the comfort of safety. True change, a revolution, only happens when someone realizes the great wrongs of their world. Only when the world is falling down around you do you find your courage. Lucy, well…

A faint tap-tap reverberates off the heavy steel door to the storage closet he has claimed home. It’s a hesitant knock, uncertain, and nobody uncertain has ever dared to enter this place. No person has ever dared to enter this place. Garcia Flynn stands and slides open the heavy door.

The woman of his thoughts stands, leans against his door frame, with her back to him. Those dark curls though, are something impossible to mistake. She turns her head to look up at him, and he sees the sight of something he’s never been given the privilege to grow accustomed to. A smile that’s faint and spells of trouble, of mischief.

Then he notices the bottle of vodka tucked under her chin and that smile of hers grows.

The knock wasn’t hesitant, it was secretive. And that secret wants to brew trouble with him.

He smiles and silently motions for her to step inside. He’s more than ready to brew trouble with her.

The door closes behind them, but Lucy doesn’t take more than two steps in. The room is sparse, more so than any of the other rooms in the bunker. His cot is neatly made still, and the lamp behind it is casting a yellow glow across green walls. On the wall opposite to the cot is an old trunk in faded red with brown leather straps. This room looks lonely in her eyes, and in his eyes it looks like a sanctuary. The last two years of his life have not known the comforts of a home to return to. In the last two months she has known no home. Her home is gone now.

Wordlessly, Lucy passes the vodka into his hand and sits on the cot.

“No longer drinking alone,” He gathers, wearing a please smirk.

She looks up at him, and he catches something soft in her eyes as that smile of hers grows.

“Clearly you had a little yourself before deciding you’d stoop so low as to drink with me,” He teases, returning her smile. If the tonic of momentary courage was what she needed to brave the unknown of him, he’s thankful.

Lucy’s eyes close for a thoughtful second. “Garcia.” His name is a soft whisper on her voice, and he swears he’s never heard her say it like that. It’s never been something so simple as just his name. 

He stills, and she opens her eyes. “Garcia, I want to get to know you,” She whispers.

He can’t help it, he just smiles. That smile is something different from any falsity he’s shown before. It’s not a smirk given to lighten a morbid joke. It’s not a grim line of amusement given in some sort of spite after a difficult conversation.

Garcia smiles at her, and it’s soft and open.

He sets the bottle of vodka down on the trunk, and he sits beside her. “What would you like to know?” He asks her.

She thinks it over carefully. The truth is she doesn’t know enough about him to know where to start. “Tell me something you want me to know,” She whispers.

He nods. It’s not something he expected to hear, and in the past, everything he’s wanted her to know has often been dismissed. It doesn’t take long to find something he wishes she knew.

“I wish I had never been anything more than a father and husband.” He admits.

He doesn’t look up at her, doesn’t need to. He knows she has more questions, and he knows what a question looks like in her eyes.

“I wish that loving my family was the only duty I was ever tasked with,” Garcia whispers. He looks at her, wearing a light expression that’s only ever been shown to those he cares about. “Do you want to know why my wife and I chose to name our daughter Iris?”

Lucy nods.

“Lorena, well… I fell into a garden the day I met her, stumbled over a rock and crushed a bed of gold irises. I was so embarrassed and stumbling over my words, trying to apologize for crushing her irises, and she just laughs. I was so startled by her laugh I couldn’t speak. She tells me I managed to crush all but one iris, and I’m back to apologizing like an idiot.” He tells her.

Lucy laughs, picturing the one perfect golden iris that survived.

“It’s funny, because Iris had hazel eyes, like mine. And if you looked closely enough, you could see golden flecks in her eyes. We used to buy her gold irises for her birthday, every year. They bloom two times a year, in spring and fall. Her birthday was in April, around the time that irises began to bloom again.”

He smiles at the memory, but something sadder haunts his eyes. Lucy looks up at him, leaning in with concern.

“The truth is, I can’t look at a flower, of any kind, without thinking of them. God help me if it’s an iris.” He admits slowly.

Lucy nods. She thinks of the yellow flower that haunts her memory. “Amy loved sunflowers. My dad would buy them, on a whim, for her to surprise her. He’d laugh and tell her: ‘If sunflowers look to the sun for light, it’s no wonder they follow Amy so much.’” She tells him. She feels that soft warmth in her chest that has nothing to do with the vodka in her stomach.

“You never talk about your father,” He observes.

“I never really talked to you about Amy before tonight,” She reminds him.

Another unspoken word passes between them. The journal. Tonight Garcia plans to act as though it doesn’t exist, act as if tonight is the first night they met.

“He died when I was in high school, and it hurt so much when he was gone.” Lucy whispers. She closes her eyes, lowers her head and lets the dark brown curls curtain away her face. “I remember I would wait up at night, on the couch, and wait for him to have a smoke. And he after he’d walk in, and he’d smile at me, and carry me to bed. He always wore these tweed jackets, even on August nights, and they smelled of tobacco. I was so little I didn’t know what smoking did to you, but I loved the smell of tobacco.”

“Our trips through time lead me to smoky bars more times than I can count, and every time I entered a smoky room I felt like I was home again, in his arms.”

Garcia looks at her then, and sees something of a siren, hidden behind those dark curls. He sees something unknown and untamed, something that is whispered about but never spoken clearly. He sees something eternal that can never be captured and observed by the common man.

Then Lucy lifts her head, drifts her soft brown eyes to his hazel eyes, and settles her head so that it leans against his arm. Something of a myth has settled down beside him and chosen him as company, him a common man.

“He didn’t die from lung cancer, which is what everyone expects me to say when they hear this story. He was killed in a car accident. He died too young to ever get cancer.” She whispers.

“My mother, in the reality I once knew, died too young.” He whispers. She looks at him and he chooses to spare her the burden of asking. “She killed herself when I was twelve. I never understood the sad woman who loved me but was afraid to love me. It wasn’t until my father told me about Gabriel that I understood. Even then, I didn’t truly understand until I lost my family myself.”

He takes a long breath. “I have been too afraid to look into my past, to see if it changed after 1969, to see if she’s still alive.” He admits.

Lucy nods, pressing her lips together in a sad line, and gently rests her hand over his arm, looking up at him in understanding. Out there, somewhere, her father might still be alive living his life with some other family, and she’s been too afraid to look. She hates to think about that, because it’s a world where Amy doesn’t exist at all. If she brought Amy back, would anything change with her father? She tries not to think about that, especially after Emma’s taunts in 1914. For all she knows, Emma erased her father from existence.

The sadness of the moment spurs Garcia to pick up the bottle on the trunk. Wryly, he observes that she didn’t bother to bring any glasses. So he unscrews the cap and takes a good swig of the vodka. It burns his throat and his chest in a way only cheap liquor knows how to do. Sometimes that burn is what you need to chase away the demons.

Hell isn’t exactly frozen, now is it?

Lucy watches him take a second swig and set the bottle back down on the trunk, the cap left off. She leans forward and takes it for herself, one short swig to keep the burning heat in her stomach going, and sets it back.

“Tell me another thing,” She whispers, leaning her cheek against his shoulder, carefully wrapping her arms around his. She doesn’t miss the way he tenses again at her touch, surprised by it, but always relaxing into it a moment later. Maybe he needs the comfort of someone as much as she does.

“I hate swimming,” He admits.

She laughs. “How can you hate swimming?” She asks in disbelief.

“I grew up in the hot summers of Croatia, right along the coast, and while I learned to swim at an early age, I can’t say I enjoyed it much as I reached adulthood.” He tells her.

She smiles, and he feels softened by the warmth of it.

“I went to university in America to study linguistics, at Columbia.” He whispers.

Her eyes flicker up to him. She’s not surprised, not really. She knew he was well educated, and she recalled something about his education in the file Agent Christopher showed them after 1969, but hearing him talk about it, with a touch of pride even, is new. She smiles, thinks about young Garcia Flynn in a class lecture paying dutiful attention. The boy she pictures seems much more carefree from the man she knows, an entire world away really, and she wonders if she’ll ever understand who he was before all the pain and suffering.

Lucy thinks of the woman she was before her life was ripped to shreds, piece by piece. That woman was determined and ambitious, but scared and clinging to safety. That safety was ripped out of her hands the day she heard the name Rittenhouse. She wonders if Garcia can picture the person she was before time travel any better than she can picture him in college. She wonders if he can reconcile the idea that she was someone else before all this, and that she’s changed immensely since then. 

They met each other in a war. Who could they have been if that war never started?

“I remember the day you took the Mothership. It was normal, ordinary. I went to work and delivered a lecture on a president, I can’t remember which one, to eighty students. I talked to my colleagues and the university board and found out I’d been denied tenure. I went home. I checked in on my sick mother, placed a snickers bar like I did every day on her nightstand, next to the five or six other candy bars she hadn’t eaten yet. I made myself dinner with Amy and told her I’d been denied tenure. She could believe it, it made her angry to hear they rejected me after the legacy my mother built there.”  
She wears a sad expression as she describes her last normal day. “And then Agent Christopher knocked on my door, and nothing was ever the same.”

Garcia feels a twist in his heart. He presses a light kiss to the top of her head, buried in her curls, and whispers: “I’m sorry.”

She looks up at him. “I know,” She whispers back. “You wouldn’t have let it happen if you knew what would happen to Amy.”

He nods. He recognizes he’s been a wrecking ball through history, and he’s destroyed too many things in his wake. Rittenhouse has been a surgeon’s scalpel carefully dissecting history and stitching it up only where it saw fit. He wondered what was worse.  
Was there a chance he could save his family? Was there a chance he could save her Amy?

Lucy rests her head on his shoulder again, but this time it feels a little heavier. Maybe now the alcohol has settled in fully now, and her body feels heavy. He leans forward to pick up the vodka, and she leans her back against the wall behind her. He takes another drink, because he still can’t feel the alcohol, and looks back at her.

“Anything else you would like to know?” He asks her, watching her tired eyes struggle to stay open.

She hums thoughtfully. “What are you afraid of?”

It’s a loaded question, with an answer he’s not sure he wants to give, and he’s not sure she wants the answer. Or at least, if she knew what the answer was, she wouldn’t want it. He watches her, something sad drifting into his eyes.

“I’m afraid of losing everyone I care about, for good.” He whispers.

She nods, almost as if she expected that. “Iris and Lorena,” She murmurs, her eyes turning down to avoid his.

“And Lucy too,” He confesses.

She looks at him then, stunned. She blinks and he sees that sadness has drifted into her eyes as well. He thinks maybe she doesn’t believe him, or maybe wishes he didn’t care, and he wants neither of those things.

“Lucy, I care about you,” He whispers, leaning towards her.

They’re so close he feels the stray hairs along the crown of her head brushing against his forehead. Her eyes look up at his and she watches him intensely. Maybe she’s daring him to do the one thing he wants to do.

He kisses her forehead instead.

She smiles, and maybe there’s a hint of disappointment in her eyes, but this isn’t how he wants to kiss her. He doesn’t want the Lucy who has let her walls crumble down as alcohol touches her veins, he doesn’t want the Lucy who is vulnerable and uncertain of what she wants. He wants a Lucy that purposely lets her walls down for him, lets him in, and wants him for who he is. It’s a Lucy he’s been waiting for so long to see, and he’ll wait as long as it takes to find her.

Her fingers brush against his cheek. “Thank you for saying that.” She whispers.

**Author's Note:**

> The wonderful comments and last night's episode inspired me to write another Garcy story. I love the way Garcia was stumbling over himself in the hotel to tell her he cared about her.


End file.
